Category Archives: Consulting

July 15, 2016 · 12:25 pm

Do You Respect The Traditions? Then Change Them!

By Alice.jessica.north

This Foodie Friday I want us to reflect on a quote I read. It comes from Chef Massimo Bottura who runs a restaurant currently ranked as the world’s best. He did and interview with the folks at Business Insider and one thing he said particularly resonated with me:

Most of the time I ask myself, “Is the tradition really respecting the ingredients?” If it’s not, then I have to change the recipe. In the beginning, it was difficult to do, but after we showed people we could evolve the traditions by taking a different approach, everyone accepted it with open arms.

I think that statement has broader application beyond the kitchen. We have many traditions in our business lives. Some of them are relatively innocuous such as our daily routine and some of them are quite important such as what is the nature of our business. It’s in these latter traditions that we find ourselves often not “respecting the ingredients” by ignoring the changes occurring around us.

Let me give you an example. When I was with the NHL over a decade ago we began discussing the streaming of local games. At the time we had some technical concerns ranging from bandwidth both on our end and consumers’ along with others. Those technical issues are long gone, and the NHL has been successfully streaming lives games to consumers since 2006, but only to consumers out of the local market where the game is airing. It has taken a decade for the local television deals to evolve to permit in-market streaming. That “ingredient” – the local television contract – was no longer “in season” and was being overly respected. The recipe had to change and it finally has, as this article shows. Bravo!

That’s one example. You can probably cite several in your business area where the recipes need change so that the traditions evolve and become relevant to the modern world. We can change things up while preserving the integrity of the tradition and the best things about why it became a tradition in the first place. Circumstances change. We need to as well.

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, food

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 13, 2016 · 10:41 am

Hi. What Do You Need?

I bet each of us has someone in our life from whom we never hear unless and until they need something. You know the type. When you’re in touch with them everything is great and you’re BFF’s. The problem is that the only times you’re in touch come when they are having a problem. When you reach out just to say hi, it’s crickets.

Many of us conduct our customer activities in exactly that mindset. They never hear from us unless we need something (generally we need them to buy something). A recent  Salesforce survey of nearly 4,000 marketers highlighted the fact that many marketers are increasingly focused on customer satisfaction and customer engagement as their top measures for success, and the way to spur those measures is through an ongoing presence that is customer focused. In addition, high-performing marketers are creating journeys for customers, with 65% saying they’ve adopted a customer journey strategy and 88% saying it’s critical to their marketing success.

This is what the CEO of Salesforce had to say about the results:

The rise of the connected customer is forcing marketing to evolve from delivering outbound campaigns to managing personalized experiences that engage the customer from day one and guide them through a seamless journey with the brand. The results of our research show that high-performing marketers that change their mindsets, tactics and technology to embrace a customer journey strategy will reap the benefits.

In other words, we can’t just show up when we need something. Think about something as simple as the Amazon Dash button. If you’re not familiar, Amazon describes it a Wi-Fi connected device that reorders your favorite product with the press of a button. If you run out of Red Bull, push the button and Red Bull shows up. It’s always there, ready when you need it. Is that walking the customer through a journey? I think it is, in a very simplistic manner.

When the phone rings and it’s this particular guy, I know I’m going to be asked for something. How do customers feel when your email arrives? Any differently?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 11, 2016 · 10:34 am

The Supermarket Doesn’t Take Shares

I almost called this post “Counting What Counts” but I thought it best to keep it even simpler to understand. I got into another discussion with someone not long ago about how they were measuring success. They have a fairly active social community – Facebook and Instagram primarily – and they were quite happy with how things have been going. The problem is that they’re focused on things other than those that create tangible value. That, to me, means cash because one of my other mantras is Cash Is King. You can generate all the shares and likes you want but the supermarket – or your investors/employees/vendors – doesn’t take shares or likes.

It’s great to foster engagement but the aim of that engagement should be to convert it into sales. Sometimes that conversion comes indirectly, I know, but if you’re tracking things with an eye toward cash, you’ll have a sense of where the conversion began and not just where it ends up (first click vs. last click for you data nerds out there).  Please don’t take that to mean that we should ignore folks who aren’t in a buying sort of mood right now. Consistent, user-focused engagement is the best way to assure that we will be on their radar when buying time comes around. Just don’t take the fact that you’ve got that engagement to mean that you’re making great progress until you can demonstrate that it’s resulting in something that will buy you a quart of milk.

Make sense?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media

Tagged as , , , ,